Dear Concerned Estranged
#39 of poetry
I don't think anyone to whom this poem is capable of speaking needs any explanation as to what it's talking about.
Though I am petty enough to dedicate it to my birth parents.
You can listen to a reading of this by makyo on the Voice of Dog HERE: https://www.thevoice.dog/episode/dear-concerned-estranged-a-poem-by-rob-macwolf-read-by-madison-scott-clary
I saw that you left me a voicemail.
I noticed you sent me a card.
I know you're expecting an answer,
But finding the time is so hard.
The gods and the ghosts outside waiting,
The skies underfoot in the street,
The sunsets in sun-scented forests
Where mountains are smaller than trees--
All of these things are my life now.
I've no time to pick up the phone.
I live everywhere out on the highway
And the one place I can't go is home.
There are gardens whose stillness has lasted
For longer than man has had fire.
There is music that no one has mastered,
And it waits for an ear to inspire.
There's apples of gold and of silver
And glistening obsidian too.
The gold heal. The silver grant wishes.
Who knows what the obsidian do?
There are hours in the the hours beyond midnight
That no human clock has yet known.
All these you would have me abandon
In exchange for a chance to come home.
I think I don't think you remember
What I once had to do to survive.
I lived in the upper back cupboard.
I told all the necessary lies.
But lies cannot keep one from freezing
And you lose all the taste from your tongue.
And I couldn't keep the lies moving.
They ran out of fuel and were done.
I left them somewhere on the highway--
They're probably still out there alone--
Then I turned around and got walking.
I knew that I couldn't come home.
So I will be out in the sunrise
In the lots where old shops were torn down.
And I will be down every alley
In every forgotten town.
And I will not need your umbrella
The rains, they will do me no harm.
I'll turn my face to the rainfall
And the rainfall, it keepeth me warm.
And maybe, at the end of some autumn,
A ship will be waiting for me
Where the sun will be setting and steeping
Its colors all into the sea.
I'll say goodbye to the summer.
I'll leave the highway behind.
I'll take the ship, and forever
Be somewhere out there with the wind.
And that, I'm afraid, is my answer.
It's the only one that I own:
Even though you'll never see me,
That's where I'll be finally home.